


life after death

by Azzandra



Series: a life less led [2]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Billie and the Outsider get an apartment together... then get sick, Billie can't get a goddamn drink in peace, Billie technically gets a desk job, Domestic, Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Human Outsider (Dishonored), No Real Plot Just Episodic Chapters, Post-DotO, Tyvia (Dishonored), Worldbuilding, a trip to the bookstore goes Awfully Awry, death of the outsider spoilers, the Outsider loses a snowball fight, the story so far:
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-24
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-01-05 00:54:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12179727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azzandra/pseuds/Azzandra
Summary: Newly arrived in Tyvia, they now have to start building a new life for themselves.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This mostly picks up where ["a road less traveled and a life less led"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12119259) left off, but assuming you want to jump right into this one without reading that one first, the basic details are:
> 
> \- non-lethal ending for Death of the Outsider, Billie takes him out of the Void;  
> \- the Outsider uses the pseudonym 'Sam Foster' (because the author can't be assed to just constantly call him 'the Outsider');  
> \- they traveled to Tyvia together.
> 
> This is ostensibly a sequel, but "a road less traveled and a life less led" can actually stand alone as well. This will be a collection of some small ideas I have about Billie and the Outsider's new lives, and expansion on some stuff I didn't get to include in the first fic. I don't have plans for a set number of chapters, I'll just be updating whenever, and for as long as I'm inspired to do so.

They got an apartment in the Vidma District of Dabokva. It was one of the older parts of the city, a peripheral village turned into neighborhood when Dabokva expanded and its borders rolled over it. Apartment buildings sprang high over low rooftops, making the skyline jagged and uneven, and though most of the streets were cobbled, some side alleys were still only earth covered by wooden planks. The entire district got terribly muddy, both in spring and fall, but half the year was winter anyway, the ground frozen hard.

Vidma District had been Anton's suggestion. Other than being a relatively cheap place to live, it was also an interesting warren of rooftop paths and twisting ways to climb. In case of danger, it would be easy work to spring out the window, scale the next building over, and disappear across the rooftops and down some hidden place. Billie knew, because she had checked: one of the windows of the apartment they rented opened out into a narrow alley, and the other onto a corner where she could easily displace onto a lamp post, or drop down to a pipe and scale down by hand.

And the district also had another feature which was just as much a security measure as it was a liability: nosy neighbors. Billie spotted them at the windows of every building. Some were sitting at the window, a pillow on the windowsill so they could prop their elbows comfortably while they looked up and down the street, or talked amongst themselves if their windows were in close enough proximity--which was often the case; buildings were angled oddly, too close together. Others, Billie didn't even manage to spot, only guessed at their presence because of the motion of some drape or curtain as they peered through.

Vidma District would be a terrible place to try to sneak through. It wouldn't be any trouble for the people living there, who could come and go without inspiring more than mild interest from all the watching eyes, but for a stranger to step through the neighborhood, to ask questions, to appear to be spying? That would undoubtedly raise suspicion. 

Sam was less enthused about the district, and he walked around the apartment hunched, as if against the weight all the eyes which had followed him into the building. He did not like the role reversal, being the watched instead of the watcher. He still couldn't sneak for shit, and Vidma seemed like a testing ground he would one day be meant to navigate.

"Don't worry about Vidma yet," Billie said, as she tested the door handle on the bathroom door. Broken. The landlord had shrugged, and told them there was a locksmith down the road. "At this point, the bigger worry is work following us back home."

'Work', as Billie so subtly called Sam's training, and 'us' when she really just meant him.

He acknowledged her meaning, pressing his lips together. He fiddled with the door of the heating stove in the living room, some heavy iron monstrosity, about three decades behind the electric heaters now fashionable in Tyvia. The former tenants had helpfully left a pile of newspapers to burn next to the stove. Firewood would need to be purchased.

The kitchen was a sink and two cabinets, crammed into the corner of the living room like an afterthought, or some outgrowth. The heating stove had probably been doubling as a cooking stove, however poorly, but if there'd been an ice box at any point in the apartment, it had been taken by the former tenants, along with any furniture items that weren't too heavy to carry.

Left behind were the bare minimum objects that could justify the landlord renting the apartment as 'already furnished'. A sofa in the living room. A single battered desk. The two bedrooms--one as narrow as a closet, and the other larger, but windowless--had beds, but nothing else.

Sam opened what looked like a wardrobe door in the hallway, and nearly got brained by an ironing board falling precipitously and then stopping its descent just as abruptly at a right angle to the wall, with the rusty clack of unoiled hinges. At least Sam's reflexes had improved enough to save him from a concussion. He pushed the ironing back right back up and shuttered the doors behind it.

He sighed, and Billie could almost hear, compounded in that one sound, the wistfulness for Karnaca, and the apartment they'd been squatting in. It had sported only one bedroom, and bloodflies sometimes found their way in, but it had also had a more reassuring lived-in quality that this one lacked. There had been a shawl draped over the backrest of an armchair, untouched the entire time they lived there, like a memorial to the former inhabitants. Books on the shelves, worn with use, and ink splatters on the desk, where someone had been careless. A place once well-loved. But Billie had taken down and put away the silvergraphs, slid them into drawers where they could not stare at her. She understood the weight of strangers' eyes too.

"It isn't the worst place we could have ended up," Billie said. Just that moment, the wardrobe door in the hallway squealed opened, and the ironing board fell back down with percussive force.

Neither of them had flinched outwardly, but they stood frozen as the sound rang in their ears, and Sam's lips tightened together wryly.

"It's certainly bent on competing for the position, however," he remarked, nothing but petty sarcasm.

Then Sam slid his hands into his pockets, and gave a long, thoughtful look to the apartment.

"This is home, then," he said, sounding surprised by the notion.

"This is home," Billie agreed. Underfurnished, stripped of any character, but a dry place to sleep; enough room to fill up with the miscellanea of life. Not an end in itself, but a good place to start. To start _again_.

 

* * *

 

Just a month after moving to Dabokva, both Billie and Sam came down with a terrible, lung-hacking cold, at the same time.

It was hard to say who was more dismayed by the predicament. She'd been feeling strong and more alive than ever, since the Outsider had replaced her eye and arm with the Void-powered artifacts she now possessed. The pulse of magic in her veins felt like it could burn any illness away, though she remembered from her stint in the Whalers that that was not always the case. On a particularly wretched summer in Dunwall, the Flooded District crawling with more mosquitos than they'd ever seen, half the Whalers and Daud himself had been struck down with fevers. It had passed Billie over that time--the vitality of her youth, or maybe just dumb luck. She hadn't cared. She just didn't get sick all that often.

Sam, on the other hand, had had four thousand years to completely forget what it felt to be well and truly ill. His bouts of seasickness had been miserable affairs for him, but as he became accustomed to the motion of the waves, the discomfort passed. Now his body, newly his again, had found some way to betray him that he'd long since considered a possibility.

Tyvia's cold, humid air cut deeper than Karnaca's hot, dust-choked winds, but Anton had dismissed the notion that it was responsible for their illess, in that academically arrogant way of his. 

"It's not the climate alone, but the rapid change between two extremes that makes the body vulnerable to afflictions of the respiratory system," Anton told her, concluding what had been at least a five minute lecture. He listened to Billie's lungs, through some device he moved along her back and pressed against the skin; it was metallic and cold, and she was trying very hard not to cough.

"I just asked if it was the Tyvian flu," Billie said, and then covered her mouth as she launched into a bout of convulsive coughing. It left her feeling rattled and weak, and she didn't like it one bit.

Anton's expression shaded into disapproval.

"There are at least three hundred virus strains classified as Tyvian flu by the ignorant public," he said, gathering up his instruments, "and the advice for most of them is bed rest and plenty of liquids."

"So, just ride it out?" Billie asked.

"It hasn't reached your lungs, so it's nothing to be alarmed by yet. I'll make you something for the cough," Anton said, "and for the fever you're running."

Billie had guessed she might be running a fever by the oppressive throb in her temples, but it was good to have it confirmed. Or--not _good_ , precisely, but informative. If you were going to get fucked, might as well know by what, Billie thought while sniffling miserably.

"And what about young Sam," Anton asked, his back turned to Billie as he rooted through cabinets in the medical lab. The thin veneer of disdain he reserved for the Outsider was still present, even in the way he used the pseudonym. "Does he even realize you're ill, or is he still above mortal suffering?"

"You'll need to make something for him too," Billie said. 

Anton turned, his eyebrows high into his hairline, and an incredulous smile barely held in check.

"No! Is that really?" Anton asked, sounding almost too delighted by the notion, but trying to conceal it, however poorly. "Perhaps you should have brought him along as well."

"For his health, or for your curiosity?" Billie said, snorting. She had no doubt Anton would have poked Sam with a much vaster array of instruments, and made the entire procedure much less comfortable than he had for her. 

"Does it matter, if all parties involved benefit?" Anton waved a hand dismissively. 

Billie wasn't sure Sam would call it a benefit to be poked by Anton, even if it came in exchange for some brilliant medicine that would immediately cure him. But Sam and Anton did try to tamp down their dislike of each other when she was around, and their conversations tended to be more bitter repartee than actual arguments.

Anton worked quickly with his flasks and bottles of strangely-colored liquids. No matter how slowed he was by age, the sheer breadth of his skill and experience could make easy work of a task. He was at a point in his life when he didn't need to paint or invent for anything but pleasure, and he managed to foster innovation through the younger inventors his studio sponsored, rather than by his own hand. He had his choice of which tasks to put his mind to.

Now he finished pouring some astringent-smelling liquid into a bottle, and screwed the cap on. He brought it up to the light, inspecting the way the light refracted through the blue-tinted liquid, and made a pleased grunt. Then he scribbled some instructions on the blank label of the bottle: correct dosage and how often to take.

"Now," he said, turning to Billie, "did you come here by coach?"

Billie had actually walked from Vidma to the nearest public carriage line, and taken a public carriage from there to Anton's studio.

Anton scoffed.

"That won't do. I'll have Nikolai fetch my coach and give you a ride. You should be resting." He presented her with the bottle. "Drink this when you get home. It'll make you drowsy."

"Thank you, Anton," she said with feeling.

"Mmh, well," Anton scratched his cheek, looking almost embarrassed. "Please do take care of yourself. And take care of that brat, too," he added more acidly.

 

* * *

 

The ride back home was a rattling haze. Her eyes felt gritty and her head too hot, and Billie folded herself up against a corner of the coach bench like a wounded animal. She thought she maybe dozed for a bit, as Dabokva's streets whizzed past the window, an indistinct blur of color and light.

When they reached Vidma District, Nikolai helped her out. When Anton wasn't around, the young secretary seemed less flustered, and more just a shy young man.

"Hope you feel better soon, Miss Foster," Nikolai said, as he offered her hand and helped her down the two steps off the coach.

She almost corrected 'Captain Foster', before she recalled why she was not a captain anymore, and her teeth bit down on the words. Traitorous sentimentality.

"I'm sure I will," she said instead. "Thank you, Nikolai."

She said it firmly enough for him to know he was dismissed, because otherwise she suspected he'd see her to the door. He looked mild and harmless enough, but that was part of the role he played. Anton perhaps wasn't wrong to believe he worked for the Operators. In Tyvia, they said that where three people gathered together, one of them was an Operator. Eyes were always watching in Tyvia. The eyes in the windows, the eyes of the government, the eyes of the Abbey. 

Nikolai packed back up into the coach and left, glancing one final time at Billie as he pulled out and onto the street.

Billie made her way into the apartment building, and then up the stairs. Her muscles screamed with pain and fatigue at every step, as if she'd been spending the last few days fighting for her life. To her confused immune system, maybe that was how it felt, but Billie herself had actually spent the past few days tangled in her sheets, trying to sweat out the cold.

She felt dizzy and too hot when she finally reached her floor, and she had to pause at the top of the stairs, leaning heavily against the banister to stop the world from spinning away from her.

When she unlocked and opened the door of the apartment, it was cast in semi-darkness, and the heavy mingled scent of sweat, sickness and woodsmoke rolled over her. It was hot inside. Billie's body didn't know what to do with this information, after being outside, the burning of her fever at odds with the cold of the Tyvian evening. Her dizziness returned.

She stepped inside carefully, latching the door before she cast her gaze around the room. The anemic Tyvian sunlight did very little to light the apartment. Brighter was the glow of the heating stove's grate, the glimpse of the fire roaring inside.

Her eyes adjusted enough that she managed to see the lump on the sofa. Sam had moved from his bedroom to the sofa, close to the stove, and his head poked out of a cocoon of blankets, hair stocking out in every direction with sweat. 

His attention was vague, unfocused, but it settled on Billie.

"Move over," Billie said, shedding her coat and scarf. She sloppily unlaced her boots, not even all the way before she toed them off and cast them aside. She was sickness-sweaty, and the moment she undressed, a cold chill stuck to the surface of her skin, even as on the inside of it the fever still burned.

Sam gathered himself up onto one half of the sofa, like a statue toppling in reverse. Billie dropped herself right next to him, tugging one of his blankets onto herself, and extending her feet towards the stove. Her toes had apparently had time to freeze while she was out, and she hadn't even noticed over the mingled pain and malaise in the rest of her body.

She settled herself. She wasn't comfortable, exactly. But she felt better bundled in the blanket.

"I thought Sokolov was going to keep you there," Sam croaked through his ailing throat.

Billie recalled the medicine just then. Luckily she'd cast her coat off onto the sofa's armrest, and she reached it easily, taking the bottle out of her inner pocket.

"He gave us something for the flu," she said, and inspected the label. A capfull once every six hours, for three days or until symptoms abated. She glanced at the clock on the wall, newly purchased since their arrival, ticking sedately.

"Gave us, or gave _you_?" Sam grumbled.

Billie uncapped the bottle as she held it between her knees, and offered the cap to Sam to hold as a cup. He took it from Billie, pinching it between his thumb and index almost daintily. She poured medicine in it, careful not to spill. It didn't seem like much, though the smell was strong, cutting cool and sharp through the thick miasma of the room. They were going to have to air out the apartment after they got better.

"Just drink it," Billie said.

His nostrils flared, irritated, but he threw his head back and downed the contents of the cap in one gulp. Then he started coughing and gagging, his eyes tearing up.

"He sent you to poison me, didn't he?" Sam asked, as his coughing subsided.

"If that's true, then we're about to make it a murder-suicide," Billie muttered, and poured more medicine in the cap, this time for herself.

The taste was atrocious on several different levels. First the way it stung the inside of the mouth, tracing a freezing, prickling path all the way down the throat. Then the unpleasant numbness it left behind, along with a chemical aftertaste that left Billie with the unsettling feeling she'd downed a shot glass full of industrial solvent.

But it also seemed to cut through the fuzziness in her throat and clear her sinuses almost instantly. It seemed like an impressive effect, for what was a tiny sip of medicine. She wondered what happened if anyone drank more than the prescribed dosage, though she couldn't figure out why someone would subject themselves to that kind of thing.

She put the cap back onto the bottle of medicine, and then placed it down on the floor, next to the sofa. She didn't have the energy for anything else, so she just pulled the blanket closer around her, and curled up on the sofa.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sam do the same. They watched the flicker of flames through the grate of the heating stove, too tired and aching to do anything else. 

She saw when Sam began nodding off from the corner of her eye, the way his eyelids fell heavy, and his chin falling into his chest. Two or three times, he shook himself awake again, but eventually, his head slumped back against the sofa's backrest and his eyes fell closed, and he was dead to the world.

He always looked morose when he slept, as if unhappy to revisit the Void even in dreams. But the way his head was slumped back left his mouth hanging half-open, and combined with the mess of his hair, he looked almost comical.

Still, that wasn't such a bad idea. Billie felt fairly exhausted herself, and the situation presented a tactical advantage. She shifted, pulling her feet up from the floor and shoving them under Sam's blanket, stretched over his lap. Between his blanket and his body heat, her toes absorbed the warmth gratefully. Then she laid back, stretched over her half of the sofa, her own blanket tight around her upper body, and she closed her eyes.

 

* * *

 

Billie was woken by a hand on her shoulder. For one confusing moment, she thought she was in the Flooded District, in her old room there, before she realized that it was too hot and she didn't recognize the surface she'd been sleeping on.

Her eyelids felt glued together with crud, and she rubbed at them before looking to see who had woken her.

Sam peered at her, looking more put together. He'd at least finger-combed his hair back in place, and although there was still a glaze of sweat to his skin, at least he looked more alert. He must have woken at some point and relinquished to sofa to Billie completely. A lamp was turned on; the window showed only the pitch dark.

"Time for the next dose," he said, holding the bottle of medicine.

Billie sat up, stretching her legs down to the floor. Her body no longer felt at war with itself, flashing from hot to freezing at unexpected intervals, but there was still a throb in her head, and a tickle in her throat. She accepted the cap of medicine from Sam.

"Did you take yours?" Billie asked.

"Just now. Very... potent," Sam said.

"Anton should try his concoctions on you more often," she said, "if it's going to warm you to him."

Sam huffed.

"I'm not warming to him, I just acknowledge he has some uses," he protested.

"More than you would've done yesterday, so..." Billie grinned, and downed the medicine.

It felt just as bad, if not worse, the second time around. At least the first time her nose had been so clogged she hadn't had any sense of taste. Now she suspected she got the full effect of the stuff, and she nearly coughed it back up.

"Never mind, I think we should reconsider that we're being poisoned," she said, voice rough.

Sam actually laughed in response.


	2. Chapter 2

Dabokva, much like any other city, had its own underbelly. No matter how strict the authorities, how steep the punishment, there were always people who could take the risk and prosper regardless.

But Billie was not as familiar with Dabokva as she was with Dunwall or Karnaca. She had few connections, and had started learning the city by foot and by hand, but had not grasped all of its more subtle dangers yet. She felt excessively cautious taking contracts; if she got caught over some stupid mistake, there was more than her own life on the line. There was Sam now, and there was her known connection with Sokolov.

It was almost by accident, then, that she obliquely fell into Sokolov's employ.

She was visiting him at his studio one afternoon. Anton wanted to take her to some places around Dabokva, show her the haunts of his youth. He was getting sentimental in his old age.

Before he could leave, however, he had to check on 'the pack of idiots', as he fondly called the young inventors under his patronage.

"It's good to keep them on their toes," Anton said in an undertone, leading her down the hall towards the studio's main room.

Billie had seen the room only once, the morning she and Sam had dropped in on Anton the first time. It had been empty, then, workbenches with half-built devices lying quiet and unused. Now she could hear the sound of voices and industry through the double door, and when Anton pushed them open and led her into the room, at least half a dozen heads turned to look. The other half-dozen were too absorbed by their tasks to have noticed.

"What have we tonight?" Anton asked the room, full of authority that he didn't usually bring to bear on Billie.

Spines straightened, notes were hastily arranged, workbenches were furtively straightened up. Billie got more than a few confused, searching looks, like she was a mystery they were meant to solve.

Anton started at one corner of the room, and Billie followed at his side quietly. A lanky young man with grease on his hands was standing at a workbench, and he threw Billie a nervous look before his gaze settled on Anton. For his part, Anton examined the blackboard next to the young man, showing a cross-section of some engine, and then the work itself, the engine stripped down to its components on a nearby table.

"Still haven't resolved the fuel efficiency issue, have you, Stoddard?" Anton asked, using the chalk to make some note on the edge of the blackboard--correcting an equation.

"N... no, Mister Sokolov, sir," the young man said, nervously. "It, um. If... If I could have another allotment of whale oil, I could probably figure it out."

"Young man, there are people out there with a fraction of your resources making devices that can run for a year on one drop of whale oil," Anton said, stony-faced. "You've wasted five gallons on an engine that can't run five minutes."

The man opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking down to the floor.

"I find that limitations can be helpful aids for creativity," Anton said. "You're getting one ounce of whale oil this week. You don't have to use it on your engine, but I suggest you find something impressive to do with it, and I won't have to reassess your position here."

Far from being dismayed, the young man straightened to attention, the very picture of gratitude and relief.

"Thank you, sir!" he said.

Anton grunted, waving off the gratitude, and moved on to the next person.

"Going soft, Anton?" Billie asked, her voice pitched low.

"He's not unintelligent, he's just too far up his own back end to see his ideas clearly," Anton replied mildly.

They stepped up to the next workbench, the next nervous natural philosopher. Anton made some minor corrections, dispensed some criticism, but seemed overall satisfied with the work. He ambled on, and Billie followed. Nervous eyes still followed her, especially since they all saw her whisper something to Anton earlier.

The next workbench was mostly shoved aside, exposing the wall behind it. A rough bulls-eye had been drawn on the wall. There was a woman standing next to the workbench, short and stocky, her hair the same shade as copperwire, and catching the light the same way.

"My dear, we've discussed property damage to the studio," Anton said, so long-suffering that Billie guessed they'd actually discussed the issue more than once.

"Oh, no, no," the woman shook her hands nervously. "This isn't like that."

She presented the device she worked on, which was shaped like a weapon, but seemed only to act as a launcher for a disk-shaped object at the end of a thin cable.

She aimed it for the wall, and with a pop and the whir of unfurling cable, the disk connected to the wall, though embarrassingly off-center from the bulls-eye. The woman reddened, embarrassed, but she tugged on the cable next, pulling it taut and demonstrating how the disk wasn't coming loose.

"It took some trial and error, but I've adjusted the vacuum-seal so the disk can connect to most surfaces, assuming they are flat enough. And the cable is very thin, but it can hold the weight of at least one adult," she explained. 

"Too thin to climb by hand, though," Billie spoke.

A hush fell over the studio, all the natural philosophers turning to watch her with scientific interest, like a hound doing some unexpected trick. Billie felt the back of her head itch, but showed no outward sign of discomfort.

"I'll defer to your judgment in this case," Anton said, his voice even, but his eyes sparking with amusement.

Billie got the sense that she was the only one in the room who knew Anton was playfully tweaking them. They were curious and likely thinking up overly-convoluted explanations for who Billie might be, and the young woman with her strange invention looked particularly flummoxed, her mouth falling open as she stared at Billie.

Billie gave Anton a flat look, but she could play his game for now.

"May I?" Billie asked, gesturing to the launcher.

"Uh, no, not at all," the young woman said, handing her the launcher.

Billie turned it over from one side to the next. There were a series of switches on the side.

"This one detaches the disk," the young inventor explained, flipping one of the switches, and the disk popped off the wall, falling to the ground with a clank. "This one retracts the cable." She flipped the other switch. The launcher whirred, and the cable was reeled in, the bobbin on its side growing fatter as the cable spooled back around it.

"Why put them there, and not along the back, right here?" Billie asked, her thumb tracing the back ridge of the launcher, where she would have been able to  flip them with her thumb. At the moment, she would have had to use her other hand to flip the switches, and she did not wear her spare arm in public.

The young inventor reddened even further, her eyes fixed on Billie's missing arm.

"Sorry," she said, voice smothered.

"I'm not criticizing," Billie said gently, "I'm only asking if there's some reason for it."

"It's... no, I just... I just put them there, I wasn't thinking about... sorry." The young woman seemed ready to retract into the collar of her own shirt.

Billie decided to leave it alone. She turned to the wall, aimed the launcher. The disk whirred, and smacked against the wall, almost to the center of the bulls-eye. 

"It pulls a bit left," Billie said. "Anton, flip the switch to retract the cable."

"Do be careful," Anton advised, but flicked the switch anyway.

The bobbin spun, trying to reel the cable back in. Billie was prepared to be dragged along, but not the exact force. She stumbled the first step, as the cable pulled her and the launcher towards the wall, since it couldn't pull the disk itself. She let herself be dragged along for the next three steps, but just as she approached the wall, she braced herself with a foot against the bottom of the wall, giving her the leverage to oppose the pull of the cable.

The final step, the reel continued whirring, reaching an alarming pitch, but Billie put her strength into keeping the cable from reeling in the disk that final foot or so, and the mechanism stuck, unable to finish the task.

Billie held it in place a few seconds, judging how hard the cable was pulling her, but she didn't actually want to break the thing, so she released it slowly, ceding its final inches so the nuzzle of the launcher finally kissed its disk, and the retracting mechanism stilled, satisfied.

She stepped back after that, looking at the launcher stuck to the wall, before turning around to the rest of the room.

Anton's eyes were alight with interesting, as his fingers ran down his beard thoughtfully. Everyone else watched Billie, this time like some specimen which had unexpectedly come to life in the middle of a vivisection.

Billie paused for only a moment, before focusing her attention on the young woman again.

"Think you could make the launcher strong enough to take a person's weight?" Billie asked. "Maybe reel someone up?"

"Uhhhh... Yes?" the woman said, hesitantly, and then, with more enthusiasm as she considered the possibility. "Oh, yes, yes, I see what you mean! Vertical pull! Why climb when you can make the device do all the work! Yes!"

She trotted up to the wall, taking the launcher off the wall and preparing to take it apart right then and there.

"We'll leave you to it, then," Anton said, amused, and the young woman nodded almost distractedly. Her eyes were on the task, her mind whirring like the mechanism in her hands.

Billie fell into step next to Anton.

"Marissa Petrov," he said, gesturing over his shoulder to the young woman. "She makes interesting little toys, but doesn't always consider the practicalities beforehand."

Billie made a non-committal sound. She hadn't intended to get involved. She suspected her she had precisely opposite inclinations compared to Marissa Petrov. Billie's tinkering had been with things like ship engines and the tools of her illicit trade, objects of immediate practicality.

Now, as she accompanied Anton from one workbench to another, there was a wary light in everyone's eyes. They still didn't know what to make of Billie, precisely, but they understood she had some expertise they couldn't quite grasp. 

Anton now actually turned to Billie, asking her opinion about some tidbit or another. He pointed to some device that killed vermin, and Billie asked if it could work on a ship, and if not, if they were prepared for the fact that people were going to try to use it on ships anyway. Then Anton showed her a mine, turning it over as its inventor explained the basic principles, and Billie knew within moments that it would be difficult to carry into the field without accidentally triggering. She had never seen someone as simultaneously perplexed and worried as that particular natural philosopher had looked while she explained the basic principles of how grenade belts were girded to the body.

Billie began to suspect her contributions to the conversations were starting to paint a terrifying picture of her skills, and she knew at the same time that Anton was pleased with the end result. He'd always enjoyed shocking other people's sensibilities.

They left the studio eventually, piling into the coach, and the door had just slammed shut as Anton turned to Billie.

"Tell me, how would you like a job at the studio?" he asked.

Billie blinked in surprise.

"As what, precisely? I don't think I have the usual qualifications your studio is looking for."

"As my assistant," Anton said.

"Don't you have Nikolai for that?" Billie pointed out.

Anton scoffed, and made a dismissive gesture. Nikolai was driving the coach, and he couldn't hear them talk from the driver's seat.

"Nikolai is a good enough secretary, for all his... innumerable faults," Anton said, leaving unspoken the fact that Nikolai was an agent for the Operators, and likely only there to spy on him, "but I require someone with a firm hand to wrangle that herd of cats."

"You want to hire as... what, a governess?" Billie chuckled. It was a laughable mental image, because the inventors under Sokolov's patronage were only young relative to Anton's advanced age. Many of them were around Billie's age.

"An administrator, let's say," Anton suggested instead. "An overseer. Someone to keep them on track and not cosset them too much."

"You're serious," Billie said, the smile falling off her face. "You realize I've never done anything like this before."

"You were a ship captain."

"The ship mostly ran itself."

"So does the studio, as long as someone regularly checks that it has not turned itself into a crater."

He _was_ serious. He was looking at her expectantly, actually wanting to hear an answer to his proposition.

Billie let out a slow breath, sinking into her seat and looking out the window. This was not a job she'd ever considered. As Daud's second in command, she'd had her fair share of experience managing a group of people, but that had been a _very_ different herd of cats, and she had only done it towards an end: a mission, a task, a well-coordinated prank in at least one instance.

But to show up each day with the single goal of keeping a group of people working? A quiet commute to a safe indoor job, day in day out?

"Why do you want _me_?" she asked. "There's got to be plenty of other people just as capable, if not more."

Anton's face grew serious, and it brought attention to how old and tired he really looked. He reached out and gently took Billie's hand in his. His fingers were calloused strangely, but warm.

"Plenty of people could do the job," he said, "and plenty would do unspeakable things for it. But not as many have my utter confidence. I'm old, Meagan. The studio is my last great work. The last piece of my legacy, such as it is. When I die, I want it in the hands of someone I trust. Someone who will do right by it."

Billie felt like the breath was knocked out of her. She squeezed Anton's fingers, awash in a swell of affection for the old man.

She could do it, strictly speaking. She knew there would eventually come a day when she would not be able to do contracts, to steal and sneak for a handful of coins. Her knees would grow rickety, her hand would start to tremble. In the harsh climate of Tyvia, maybe her lungs would start feeling the consequences of hard use first: too many years breathing in the moldy air of the Flooded District, or the mine dust of Karnaca, and she would one day get a cough that would never really go away. Had Daud's body given out under the weight of his regrets, under the repeated battery of the forced matches at Albarca, or just as a consequence of a lifetime's worth of strain and injury?

She'd lost her taste for that kind of life. On nights when she had to go out across Dabokva's roofs and back alleys, she ached more fiercely for the Dreadful Wale, for her bunk and the safety of water stretching for miles. Dabokva was not quite home yet, not in the way Dunwall had been, or Karnaca had become. But it could be, eventually. It might be. Anton was making a place for her, and Sam was making a place alongside her. She was not alone.

"Anton, I..." Her voice vanished, and she had to swallow a hot knot of tears in her throat. She breathed in, and then exhaled slowly before continuing. "I can try."

"It's all I ask," Anton said, patting her hand. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one takes a turn into more headcanon-heavy territory, but also, Billie and Anton's friendship! Which I always thought was one of the weirder and more interesting elements in Dishonored 2, so I couldn't resist.
> 
> Anyway, thought I should mention, you can also hit me up [on tumblr.](http://azzandra.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

Fall came quickly to Tyvia, in sheets of icy rain that left Dabokva sodden and Vidma District ankle-deep in mud. Yet it seemed to last only two weeks, before the weather warmed briefly, and then the first snowfall of winter came.

The fire was crackling in the heating stove, barely warming the air, but Sam opened a window, and watched the slow drift of snowflakes with his chin propped on his fist. His expression was blank, unreadable. But his eyes tracked the snowflakes as they fell, following one at a time, and then flicking upward to find another one to track.

Billie stayed with him by the window, nursing a hot drink; Sam's own mug lay forgotten on the windowsill, until the steam stopped rising from it. He might've been in a strange mood. Or, he might've been in a perfectly normal mood, which was still a novelty after four millenia of enforced godhood. She didn't comment on it, but on an impulse she didn't quite recognize, she reached over and ruffled his hair.

He gave her a bewildered look in response, unsure how to react in the face of such indignity.

"Your drink's getting cold," she said instead of offering any explanation, and picked up her mug to move away from the window, and deeper into the warmth of the apartment.

The day stretched open before Billie. She had no real idea what Sam was going to do; he certainly went out into the city when she wasn't around. Sometimes he would come meet her at the studio at the end of a day, and they would take the carriage line home together.

The shelves in his room, newly purchased, and hastily installed, were already laden with books and strange little trinkets now, but she couldn't guess at their origins; she didn't let him keep anything they pocketed on their nightly outings, as to not incriminate themselves. 

Once, when she'd been in his room, she had picked up one of the books and leafed through it. Notes had been scrawled on the margins, the writing unpracticed and almost illegible. Billie had thought the writing was in another alphabet, until she realized it was merely the common script, written by someone who knew the letters, but had never been properly taught how to write them himself. A paragraph had been crossed out, in straight terse lines--something concerning an old Empress--and a couple of lines had been wedged in the paragraph break above it, some sarcastic comment dripping with contempt for the author. The rest of the book was similarly defaced; whatever Sam still remembered from his time as the Outsider, he seemed to pour into this activity. It wasn't the worst outlet, all things considered.

Billie placed her empty mug in the sink, and considered Sam for a moment.

"There's a bookseller on General Kandon Street," she said, testing the waters. "Ulrik's Pages." The ad had been pinned to the corkboard at the entrance of the apartment building since before they even moved in, but Billie had not given it much thought until now.

Sam's head turned, as startled as when she'd ruffled his hair. He considered.

"I know it," he said. "The owner was a bandit in his youth. He almost hanged for it. He still would have preferred that to being sent to a prison camp."

"You've been there?" Billie asked. Perhaps that was where he'd gotten the books?

"No," he said, shaking his head. He licked his lips before continuing, "Not in person, exactly, that was before I..." He trailed off.

"Oh." Billie wasn't sure what to say to that. "Would you like to go?" Or perhaps his acquaintance with Ulrik was a bit too close to risk it?

He thought on it, his head tilted gracefully, the gesture reminiscent of his old appearance in the Void, but his brow furrowed in a very human expressiveness in counterpoint to it.

"Yes," he said eventually. "It should be fine."

Billie had to wonder what calculation he had to make before reaching that conclusion. Had he ever walked through Ulrik's dreams? Spoken to him?

They dressed in their heavy coats, looped their scarves around faces, pulled their hats low over their eyes before leaving the apartment. Still, when the wind picked up, it would send a flurry of snow straight into their faces, snowflakes clinging stubbornly to their eyelashes.

Dabokva was muted, save for the scrape of snow shovels echoing down streets, the crunch of snow underfoot, the wet squelch of coaches on the roads. The snowfall seemed to absorb all of Dabokva's usual ambient noise, blanketing the city in a strange hush. Billie could feel some of that strange mood rubbing off on her. It felt noiseless the way some spaces in the Void felt noiseless. She preferred the crackle of the fire. They didn't speak as they walked.

Soon enough, they reached General Kandon Street, and its neat rows of ornate storefronts. Many were clothing stores: mannequins posed in the latest winter fashions, fur and velvet and whalebone details. A cheerful toy shop cluttered its window with gaudy painted toys, both carved from wood or built from simple clockwork. Further down were an array of specialty shops: locksmiths, jewelers, horologists. A music store, advertising the latest masterpiece by Shan Yun on audiograph card, and then a notice glued over that same advertisment: "Sold Out".

The street was old, just wide enough that a coach would technically be able to drive through it, but only if they were very careful, and all the pedestrians flattened themselves against the buildings. Nobody ever tried, thankfully. In Dunwall, some entitled bastard with too much money and too little regard for the general populace would undoubtedly be doing it if they even thought it would get them to their high society mixers just a minute quicker.

But in Tyvia, the classes tended to mingle more freely than the other Isles. The crowd frequenting General Kandon Street was a mix of middle class desk workers in their pressed suits, indulging their favorite pastimes, of threadbare laborers shopping for necessities and having their things mended--their shoes patched at the cobbler, their pocket watches adjusted at the horologist--and of fur-wearing aristocrats with heavy rings on their fingers, frittering away their money on whatever frivolities caught their attention that week. 

Billie hadn't realized it until arriving to Tyvia, but this was perhaps where Anton learned his irreverence towards class distinctions, and why he was as perfectly at ease rubbing elbows with royalty, as he was sharing a drink with sailors or beggars.

Ulrik's Pages had one of the more subdued storefronts. There were a handful of new releases in the window, some pulp and romance novels interspersed with more high-brow books on natural philosophy and political theory, a cross-section of popular and respectable that exemplified the store's selection.

When they pushed in through the door, a bell rang right above the door frame. The elderly man behind the counter, kindly and bespectacled, looked up and smiled. If this was Ulrik himself, then he managed to look remarkably harmless for someone who was a bandit in his youth.

There were few patrons in the store. A young man with the look of a student about him, shuffling around the natural philosophy section, and a woman with a fur stole and a black widow's veil over her face, leaning against the counter as she surveyed a catalog. By the tilt of her head, she looked up when the bell rang, but Billie could see nothing of the woman's face.

"Hello," the old man behind the counter said, "and welcome to Ulrik's Pages. I am Ulrik. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Just browsing, thanks," Billie said, smiling at the old man in passing.

When Billie brushed past the counter, she felt the atonal tinkling of a bonecharm, just at the edge of her perceptions. She smothered the instinct to use her Foresight and inspect the bookstore, but she knew it was there, somewhere. 

Sam must have sensed something as well, because when they were both alone in the far end of the bookstore, out of earshot of the loitering student and out of view of the counter, he said in an undertone,

"Ulrik sells bonecharms under the table. Sometimes rarer things as well, books with forbidden magic, or some pulsing dead heart that can reveal secret things about the world. But the bonecharms, he makes himself."

His voice was a steady murmur, almost like an afterthought as his fingers traced along the spines of books on some shelf. They were well out of earshot of the other patrons and the owner both, and their words did not carry in the paper stillness of the bookstore.

"Huh," was Billie's response. "That could be useful to know for the future, actually." She had felt out the black market in Dabokva, and made her purchases whenever she needed, but the black magic suppliers tended to be even cagier, and she hadn't made any notable connections on that front.

Sam shrugged.

"He does good work and never sells out his clients," he said, then after a faltering moment, "or he never did, at least. Last I was aware."

"I'm sure people don't change that drastically in so short a time," Billie said, glancing back towards the counter. "How come you didn't drop in on him sooner?"

"It didn't feel like the time to do so," Sam said airily.

"And now it does?" Billie asked, dismayed by this lapse into cryptic remarks again. He had been doing so well until now, using plain words and comprehensive sentences.

There must have been something in her tone, because Sam looked at her, his eyes large and grave, but his mannerisms uncertain. His fingers curled away from the books and into his pockets, and he hunched into himself, shrugging.

"I used to... I had... premonitions, before," he said. "Glimpses of the future. A gift of prophecy, they called it, but it never felt like anything more than witnessing shadowplays, and trying to guess at what the shapes represented. I didn't understand the course of time until I was dead, and I could see it all unfurled before me, but maybe it was that ability to glimpse it beforehand that allowed me to see its entirety once my mind was unshackled from the limitations of mortal perceptions."

"You could see the future before the sacrifice," Billie spoke slowly, "and now you have that ability again?"

"Sense, more than see," he shrugged again, this time more casual. "And--yes, but I understand more about the mechanics of it now."

Billie narrowed her eyes, appraising this information for a few seconds. There was a tension to Sam's shoulders, like he was awaiting her judgment. But it was not Billie's intention, nor her place, to render judgment on something like this.

"The news kiosk down the way sells these little lottery scratch cards," Billie began.

She managed to startle him into a laugh, and the tension drained out of his body. Billie couldn't help smiling as well.

"I used to do things like that before, too, when I was very young," he said. "Not scratch cards, but there were these street games at high holidays, where you had to guess things, or bet on rats in a race, and you'd win a small prize." He waved vaguely, like gesturing to something in the distance--something across a great chasm of time now, Billie realized. His childhood four millenia past. 

"I take it that didn't end well for you," Billie said.

"Not when I got banned from the games, no," Sam shook his head, "and not when I drew the attention of forces greater than myself. I was born under ungenerous stars, but I revealed myself stupidly. There was no Abbey of the Everyman in those days, but magic was also less common, and more subtle, and people used it more cautiously. I stood out like a bonfire in a field of candles. I didn't know who was watching."

His expression hardened, grew distant; reflexively self-loathing. Billie knew the kind of self-recrimination that a person could spiral into following a poor choice, or the wrong path taken at a critical fork in the road. She knew it more keenly than he did: it was far more recent in her case. She could not blame Delilah or Breanna Ashworth for the decision she'd made to betray Daud, nor her youth, nor Daud, even though he'd blamed himself for the outcome in the end. But she knew, all the same, that hindsight could not do a single thing to change the past. That her mistakes were things that had yielded hard lessons, and she was better for having learned them.

"You couldn't have known," Billie said. "In a better world, you wouldn't have needed to." She shook her head, firm. 

Sam shrugged again, just a little twitch of the shoulders, and he looked to the shelves instead of at her. He slipped out a book, flipping through the pages, his eyes not truly tracking the words.

"So," Billie said, picking a book at random, and flipping through it as well, "how do you know Ulrik?"

"Ah," Sam cracked a smile, seizing on the change of subject, "same way I knew about you. He was the underling of one of my Marked."

"Was that before, or after he was a bandit?" she asked.

"Before. And during, in a sense, but he was willing to be shaped into something else," he said. "Sometimes the strange overlaps and contradictions of someone who is Marked spill over into the lives of their followers. It's hard not to imprint on someone who wields that kind of power... isn't it?"

Billie considered flicking his forehead for that one. She didn't only because her hand was occupied.

She looked down at the book she'd picked up instead, only now even noticing the subject matter. The page she'd opened to was full of etchings of Pandyssian birds. One of them had jagged fangs along its beak. Billie hoped it was artistic license. She pointed it out to Sam.

"That is a remarkable likeness," he said. "They're very aggressive, and very hard to approach without being killed. Impressive work on the artist's part."

Billie could not for the life of her understand why people kept going on expeditions to that place. She didn't put the book back, though.

 

* * *

 

By the time they finished their browsing, and gathered up the books they'd decided on purchasing, little had changed in the store. The student was propping up a bookshelf in the natural philosophy section, out of Ulrik's sight, and apparently bent on reading a whole book cover to cover without doing the courtesy of paying for it. The woman in the widow's veil left just as they were approaching the counter, with no purchases, though perhaps she'd been ordering something from the catalog Ulrik was putting away.

Ulrik smiled distractedly as they placed their purchases on the counter, and offered to wrap them for them.

"Interesting selection," Ulrik said, deep furrows appearing across his forehead as he examined the title of one book on marine bird taxonomy (shelved in the hobby section because it had been written by an enthusiast instead of a natural philosopher), one book on the rural superstitions of Tyvia (heavy on lurid detail), and an omnibus collection of controversial historical treatise on the reign of the Tyvian princes (Sam hinted that he had at least one irresistible morsel of gossip about every single one of them).

"We're studying the local wildlife," Billie deadpanned, as she placed her pouch of coins on the counter.

Ulrik gave a reedy laugh, but it felt forced.

He counted out change, marked something in his ledger, and then he began wrapping the books in brown paper, tying off the stack with strings. He worked slowly, in halting movements.

Billie glanced to Sam, who looked equally puzzled by Ulrik's apparent ill ease. It probably had absolutely nothing to do with them, so Billie squelched the niggling paranoia at the back of her mind.

"Please come again," Ulrik said, and handed the stack of books to Sam.

"Thanks, we will," Billie said, even as she decided they would not, or at least, not anytime soon. She couldn't shake the unsettling feeling Ulrik was giving her.

Sam was already turning to the door and leaving when Ulrik gestured for Billie to wait.

"Miss, don't forget your receipt," Ulrik said, handing the scrap of paper over to her.

Billie was about to thank him again, but just as her fingers closed around the paper and she tugged, Ulrik kept a hold of it.

"I'm sorry about this," Ulrik said, and before Billie could react, the world blanked out around her.

She knew she hadn't fallen unconscious only because, as her eyesight and hearing snuffed out, the sight of her Void-powered eye took over. It wasn't quite Foresight, because she was still within the confines of her body, and time did not stop. She felt, instead, like she'd been hit with a howling bolt while simultaneously deafened by a grenade. It felt like being a statue, her hand still outstretched towards the receipt, frozen.

The perceptions of her Void eye were confused, fuzzy, patchworks of swirling colors with no read borders. She had it covered with an eyepatch, but she knew the patch usually did nothing to hinder its functionality--this was the work of magic.

She could hear the throb of her own heartbeat, but each beat was slow, lasting as long as a wave crashing against a shore--the froth of water as it licked across a flat, sandy beach, and the slow drag as it retreated.

She focused on her Void eye, willing the colors to sort themselves. The edges of her sight were sea-black, edging into deep blue, but there was an orange smear somewhere in the distance, a pinprick of light that she focused on. She visualized flying towards it, gliding like her Foresight usually allowed, until it came into view, and a smear became a shape, a shape became distinct within its borders. That was Ulrik, still standing before her.

In the suspended moment between one pump of her heart and the next, she realized her guess about being turned into a statue had not been wrong. Now that she could focus her eye into showing her images, she could see the cold, dark blue outline of her arm--cold as stone.

Her rage pulsed, and she felt the cracks that formed. Orange bloomed from her fingertip, and spiderwebbed up her arm in a hundred little fractures. Her heart hitched into a quicker rhythm, the beating of a slow drum instead of waves. Her fingers--clenched.

She'd never tried to summon the ritual knife to her left hand; Sam had said it was attuned to her, regardless of arm, but she was used to aiming with her left and wielding a blade in her right.  That did not mean she did not take the precaution of learning to wield a blade in her left hand, however. And on the ship ride from Serkonos, she'd had ample time to train, as she taught Sam.

And now, the knife slipped through the Void and into her left hand, emerging just as a layer of concrete-gray cracked to dust off her skin, and disappeared into nothing.

Ulrik was startled, but managed to take a step back just as the knife appeared, narrowly avoiding the cut of the blade. He was either too slow, or too dumbstruck to react as Billie shook off the last of the petrification he'd inflicted on her, and vaulted over the counter, pushing him against the wall. She used the length of her body to pin him, but she kept him there with the knife to his throat.

"You'd better have a damn good explanation," Billie said, voice low and dangerous, "because someone's going to be writing it on your gravestone."

Ulrik blanched, his expression instantly crumpling into regret.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but she said I had to. She just wanted a word with your boy--"

Billie cursed, pushing away from Ulrik as she cast a gaze around and realized Sam was no long in the bookstore. She didn't know how long she'd been frozen--probably not long at all, it wasn't as if Ulrik was going to risk being caught performing black magic in full daylight--but she had no idea who took Sam, and which way they went.

The knife disappeared as she rushed out into the street--she opened the door so fiercely, that she nearly knocked the bell clean off--and she stopped on the sidewalk, looking up and down General Kandon Street.

There were few people out that day, small clumps of shoppers at some of the more popular stores, but she couldn't clearly see Sam.

Which way? Billie took a breath, and activated her Foresight. Her mind's eye skimmed up and down the street, first in one direction, then slingshotting in another, for as far as the tether would allow. She felt the tug back to her body, increasingly persistent, increasingly urgent (back now or it will snap, back now or it will go loose and you will be lost like a coin fallen between floorboards, back now, go back now,), but she was rewarded, at the very edge of her perception, just before the elastic yank back into her body, by a glimpse of Sam--and another, a woman, off to his side and slightly behind him, pushing him along.

Why did he go with her? Why would he leave Billie turned to stone in a bookstore, and go with some stranger? None of the answers that rose to Billie's mind were reassuring in the least. Ulrik had been in on it too--but had he used a bonecharm, some magical relic, or was that an ability he had from his bond with one of the Outsider's Marked? Did the Marked even have any power anymore, with the Outsider gone?

She broke into a sprint, loud and messy as her boots struck the ground and splattered slushed snow. Bystanders pulled away with offended noises as they avoided getting splashed, but nobody stopped her.

She turned the corner from General Kandon Street, onto a wider boulevard, but she had to skid to a halt when she couldn't spot Sam right away. She activated her Foresight again. Pain lanced through her temple, but the world dimmed, reduced to basic outlines. She inspected the orange glow of bodies all around, until she recognized Sam's--it looked strangely unassuming, for who he'd been. 

He was in a coach, and whoever had taken him was sitting right across from him.

Billie looked up and down the street. No City Watch nearby, but a few people, passing up and down the street. A man reading a newspaper on the corner, under an awning, close enough to be tricky, but not really paying attention. She approached the coach, carefully assessing blind spots. With only one arm, she was limited in how she could approach; the left side door, so she could take out the kidnapper as quickly as possible. She didn't know yet if she would use her knife, or just a nice, cathartic punch to the face, but her palm itched, ready to summon it anyway.

She inched closely, heeding the crunch and slosh of melting snow under her boots. She had to wait until a dour-faced matron walking a black hound passed by, and Billie took the time to calm her breathing, and still the thundering of her heart.

Her hand nearly reached for the coach door, when she heard the squeak of footsteps behind her. She played the motion off, managing to look natural as she leaned a hand against the side of the coach and inspected her own boot, as if looking for some hole in the sole, but she needn't have bothered.

"Let's maybe stop right there, shall we?" a voice spoke from behind her, and then lowered to inform her, "Got a pistol to your back here. Telling you so you know to play nice."

Billie had a moment to assess. Did he have a pistol? Her Foresight told her he did, in his coat pocket, but angled towards her back. Could he shoot her through two winter coats and actually do any damage? Depended on the pistol. He seemed confident, but then, he might be bluffing or vastly overestimating the kick of his gun; he wouldn't be the first man to do so.

She could probably try to get the drop on him. Foresight told her his exact position, giving her an advantage he didn't know she had.

Ultimately, the decision was taken from her when the window of the coach popped open. Smoke billowed out.

"Sully, don't be rude," spoke the woman from the coach. "We did take something from her. Let her in."

There was a disgruntled sigh, but then Sully ambled around Billie and into view. A weasel-faced man, squinting suspiciously, but both his hands were in sight and free of any weapon.

"You behave now," Sully said, obedient but not happy about it, as he opened the door for Billie.

There was a blast of hot air and smoke, the cloying aroma of a cigar, and Billie was momentarily blinded as she climbed the step into the coach. The inside was darker than the snow-bright exterior, and it took her sight a moment to adjust.

Sam was sitting unharmed, even the package of books still in his lap, intact. He politely scooted over to make room for Billie on the bench, but did not say anything.

On the other side was, unsurprisingly in retrospect, the woman who'd been in Ulrik's Pages. Billie should have guessed that the widow's veil was too strange an affectation, even for the dramatic dress sense of Tyvia. Now it was pulled back, revealing a wind-chafed face, laugh lines and frown lines dug deep in equal measure, set against an elegant bone structure, framed with black hair shot through with gray. A woman who had been perhaps more handsome than beautiful, even in her youth. But there was something distantly familiar about that face. Something about the angle of her cheekbones, and the tilt of her eyes.

She had a pistol trained on Sam, and a lit cigar in her other hand, whorls of smoke rising lazily and thickening the air in the coach.

"Either you're better than I thought, or Ulrik is rustier than I remember," the woman remarked casually.

Billie's lips tightened into an unfriendly line, but she kept quiet until she could figure out what she'd just walked into. The woman had a bonecharm right at her throat; it looked like a cameo, set on a black ribbon, but there was the image of a whale carved lovingly into it instead of a portrait, and runes were etched along its margins. A bold thing to wear in public, even if it was not fully visible through the black veil she wore. 

More alarmingly, over the black ribbon the bonecharm hung on, were old rope burn scars in an angry line across her throat, probably from a noose. 

Was this one of the Outsider's old Marked?

"She one of yours?" the woman asked, voicing the same thoughts Billie had just had about her.

Sam blinked, trying to look guileless.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.

Billie could see what he was playing at, and under certain circumstances, she'd think that was a good strategy. But he managed to botch the role. He was too aloof, and even she could tell that, while he was undoubtedly frightened, it wasn't anywhere near to the visceral fear a random civilian would experience at being kidnapped and threatened. He did not seem to truly believe the woman would shoot him.

She seemed to catch on to this as well, because she hummed thoughtfully, and then moved the muzzle of her pistol towards Billie. She didn't look at Billie, instead keeping her attention on Sam's face, and she saw it, the twitch of a muscle in Sam's face, revealing he wasn't as sure that his kidnapper wouldn't shoot Billie.

"Let's try this again," the woman said. She took a long drag of her cigar, before speaking through mouthfuls of smoke, "Drop the act, or your friend here loses her last good eye."

Sam inhaled sharply, straightening in his seat. He frowned, eyes sliding towards Billie, before going back to the Tyvian woman. Billie wished they'd prepared better for this situation, that there was some way she could signal he didn't need to give this felon what she wanted. If the woman had only the pistol and the bonecharm, then Billie assessed her chances to win in a melee to be pretty good. But Sam was sitting directly in front of the woman, and there was always the chance of the pistol going off, of Sully overhearing the fracas and jumping into the fray as well. Billie wanted to formulate a plan yet, and be sure that they would both come out of this alive.

"This isn't necessary," Sam said, even-voiced.

"It wasn't necessary about three denials ago," the woman said flatly. "We're at the point where you've proven the need for it."

Sam lapsed into stony silence, looking at the woman with displeasure etched into his face. Disapproval, even, which did nothing to support the role of the innocent bystander that he'd tried to play. 

"Well?" the woman prompted, and when Sam wouldn't say anything, she slowly turned her attention to Billie, the muzzle of her pistol angling upwards, towards Billie's face.

"What do you want, Yelena?" Sam snapped suddenly, and the woman looked back at him, surprised, but pleased by the outburst. Her pistol was still trained on Billie, but her attention was now fully his.

"Same thing as always," she said, a grin splitting across her face, revealed a gold tooth where one of her canines had been. "Just a little bit of fucking acknowledgment, hey? Only thing any of us ever got from you after you plastered your little Mark on our hands."

"You want _attention_?" he asked, incredulous, and a little bit frazzled.

"I want you to cut the crap, brat," Yelena said, kicking his shin--not hard, but just for emphasis. "Twenty damn years, couldn't pass one of your shrines without you nattering in my ear all you even thought about me and my every decision. Twenty years, you were breathing down the back of my neck, judging me from your little throne in the Void. And you thought I wouldn't recognize your face? I know your face, boy-o. I know it like I know the noose. Met you two at the same time, didn't I?" She raised her chin just a bit on that last point, drawing attention to the noose scar across her throat.

Sam blinked in the face of this speech, seemingly unsure how to react.

"There. Not as fun when someone does that at you, huh?" Yelena said, her mouth twisting to a smile.

"If you're quite through," Sam said, trying to recover whatever aloofness he'd had before, "I'd prefer to go now. My friend as well."

Yelena actually seemed to be thinking it over. She narrowed her eyes at Sam, took another drag of her cigar. Then she shrugged and holstered her pistol. Apparently she decided she got what she wanted from him.

"Didn't answer my question," Yelena said, addressing Billie. Her voice was more sober, more subdued. "Were you one of his Marked too?"

"No," Billie said.

"Well, that's good to know," Yelena said, still conversationally. "Always had the sense that the closest thing he had to friends was just the people he talked at."

"That was probably true at the time," Billie said. "But he's getting better at being human."

Billie could see Sam's offended expression from the corner of her eye; perhaps not so much at what she was saying, as the fact that she and Yelena were talking over his head.

"Human," Yelena repeated, shaking her head incredulously. "A fucking twist, I tell you. I was sure he was just... dead, now. Like maybe the Abbey finally managed to kill him. Didn't expect to see him walk right into Ulrik's bookstore, that's for sure. Thought I'd dropped straight into the Void."

"What are you even doing in Dabokva?" Sam asked, peevishly. "You don't like cities."

"Of course not," she said. "Cities is where the wanted posters are." She tapped her cheek for emphasis.

Billie realized now why Yelena's face had seemed vaguely familiar--a younger version of it was plastered on old, peeling wanted posters across Dabokva. Yelena Brezha, leader of a bandit gang called the Hangmen. The list of crimes had not seemed extraordinary to Billie: highway robbery, assault, black magic, murder. The stock in trade for a rural bandit in Tyvia, Billie had thought. Now there was a hint of something stranger behind that.

"But," Yelena shrugged carelessly, "the truth is, I'm getting old. Could've had maybe five more good years terrorizing the countryside with the Mark. But since the magic drained out, well. My bad knee's been a mess. Can't climb as well the old fashioned way. Can't slip another noose, ever again.  Can't spy ahead through critters' eyes. You know the difference between a retired bandit and a dead one?"

"Knowing when to stop," Billie said.

Yelena perked up, pleased. She looked like she recognized something familiar in Billie, and for some reason, Billie was no longer completely comfortable having anything in common with someone who self-described as 'terrorizing the countryside'. 

"She knows," Yelena said. "Go on for long enough doing stuff that I do to people, and soon enough consequences catch up with you. The real trick is stopping before that happens, and some people have a harder time stopping than carrying on. Always one more job, one more big score. Me, I got out while the getting was good."

"So that's it, then?" Sam asked, raising an eyebrow. "Your campaign against the nobles and the landowners just ends? The peasants are no longer worth protecting, because suddenly the task has gotten hard? You pack up and leave for a cozy retirement, while the lords of the land recover the price of your depredations out of the hides of the people you claimed to champion?"

Yelena fixed Sam with a searing cold glare.

"You say that like it's been easy at any point," Yelena gritted out slowly. "And last we spoke, weren't you the one always complaining that my actions were bringing the people more difficulties than just leaving well enough alone?"

"I was not complaining," he said stiffly, not quite dignified. "I was questioning whether your motivations were justice or revenge. A distinction which, even after two decades, you still refuse to acknowledge might exist."

"Told you, brat," she hissed out, "the difference between justice and revenge is the coin pouch of the person doing it."

"Ah. Explains why you kept so much of what you stole from your rich victims," Sam said coolly.

"Now you get it," Yelena said, tone mocking. She reached over patted his cheek, like he was a hound who finally got a trick right.

Sam bristled, and swatted her hand away. He turned to Billie.

"I suggest we leave now," he said, tone brooking no argument.

Far from being annoyed by this outburst, Yelena seemed amused. Her teeth clamped down on her cigar, as if that could stop her from grinning. It didn't; she flashed her gold tooth again.

"Oh, are you going to walk? No disappearing into thin air this time?" Yelena asked.

Sam did not rise to the bait. He raised his chin in response, jaw clenching as he bit down on any words. He was not used to being at the taunting end of an interaction with any of his Marked, and that showed clearly. 

Billie would have found his haughty demeanor amusing as well, if she did not know as much about the circumstances of his godhood as she did. To Yelena, perhaps this seemed like the Outsider getting his comeuppance. She did not understand it was his freedom, and Sam showed no inclination towards telling her otherwise. And if he wouldn't say anything, then Billie wouldn't either.

"It's been nice meeting you," Billie said to Yelena.

Yelena did not make any motion to stop Billie from reaching to the door handle and popping it open. She did give Billie a final look up and down, however, as if memorizing her for future reference.

"I didn't even get your name," Yelena said, a hint of goading in her voice.

"No offense, but I prefer it that way," Billie said.

Yelena laughed, a creaky, unpracticed sound, smoke still wafting through her teeth. But then she settled into another grin, more friendly than predatory, but only by a hair. 

"None taken," she said, giving Billie a jaunty salute with the hand holding the cigar, sending smoke curling around her head like a halo.

Billie climbed out of the coach, stepping down onto the street under Sully's suspicious, squinty-eyed gaze. Sam followed, but just as his foot was on the step, Yelena's voice floated out after him.

"You should be thankful it was me you ran into, and not the Bear King."

Sam froze in place, his face paling, his hands tightening around the package of books until his knuckles were a bloodless white color.

"He was one of yours too, wasn't he?" Yelena continued, a smirk in her voice, even though her face was not visible. "Real piece of work. And you were ragging on me for my methods. The cheek of you."

Sam jumped the last step, and slammed the door of the coach closed behind him. He met Sully's squint with a withering glare, and gathered his dignity again.

Sully was bemused by the exchange, but stepped back towards the driver's seat and didn't comment or ask any questions. He let them walk away.

They walked back towards General Kandon Street, in complete silence, uneasy but unwilling to glance back and see if they were followed. Billie did activate her Foresight one final time just to make sure, though. A headache pulsed slowly at her temples, spiking sharply if she stepped too hard.

They passed Ulrik's Pages, the door now shuttered and a 'Closed' sign hanging in the window, and then they emerged out the other side of the street, onto the twisting alleys leading back to Vidma District.

"Gift of prophecy, huh?" Billie asked dryly.

Sam flinched at the break in silence, and then looked embarrassed.

"I didn't know this was what would happen," he said. "I'm sorry."

"Just please tell me you never gave your Mark to a literal bear."

Sam's brows furrowed in confusion for a moment, before he realized what Billie was referring to, and he rubbed the bridge of his nose, exhaling slowly.

"If you ever met Leopold," he said, "I'm sure you would conclude that giving it to a literal bear would have been preferable." 

"Shit, Sam. How did you pick these people?"

"They're not monsters at the beginning," Sam said, voice subdued. "None of us ever are."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part turned out longer than both the previous chapters put together, which was not my intention, but it did work out okay because it has more Billie and Sam interactions, without Anton muscling in.
> 
> Also, Yelena is partially modeled after a [Balkan hajduk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hajduk), which really translates into her being a medium chaos folk-hero bandit/morally ambiguous vigilante. Well, a retired one now, I guess! (I also had to strip down her part a lot, because boy howdy, it turned out long).


	4. Chapter 4

The days after running into Yelena were gloomy, both in the weather and in their moods. 

Billie found herself watching for a widow's veil wherever she went, and on one evening, as she was coming home, she carefully peeled a wanted poster of Yelena off an alley wall, and took it home with her. She slipped it into the suitcase under her bed, where she still had her own old wanted posters, and Daud's, and even one of Emily's that she'd acquired before they were all taken down following her return to the throne. Billie heard the latter were collector's items now, going for ludicrous prices at certain auctions. 

Sam became shy about leaving the apartment. Two days in a row, Billie went to work, passing him sprawled on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, and both times she returned home to him in the same position, his expression distant and bored.

There were hints that he hadn't spent the entire time on the sofa--items moved around the apartment, tins of food gone from the cabinets--but she still didn't know what to make of his mood. Was this sulking? Did she have a moody teenager under her roof? What did one do about that kind of thing, exactly?

The third time it happened, Billie leaned her forearms on the backrest of the sofa, and peered down at him.

"So, what is this?" she asked.

He blinked, his gaze moving from some point on the ceiling to focus on Billie.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked.

Billie reached down, pushing the hair back from his forehead so she could press the back of her hand to the skin. It was a bit clammy, but not hot.

"You don't have a fever, I see," she said, then inspected him head to toe, "no broken limbs," she continued, as his expression grew perplexed, "so why are you lying here like a lump?"

He shifted minutely, but didn't rise from the sofa, maybe just to make a point.

"If you need to make use of the sofa you could just tell me so," he said.

"No, thanks," she replied, not missing a beat, "I do my brooding on roofs. It's more dramatic that way." 

Sam's lips pressed into a thin line, and he folded his arms, like Billie was the one being ridiculous.

"I'm not brooding," he said, trying to sound as reasonable and adult as he could.

"You say that, but I'm going to come back home one day and find an entire clutch of baby chicks."

Now Sam just looked confused. But he shook it off, scoffed, and twisted away like Billie's gaze was scalding, and rolled off the sofa to his feet. He straightened his clothing fussily, his back turned to Billie.

"Sam, wait," Billie called out, before he could stomp away, and he stopped in place, shoulders hunched defensively. "Do you... want to talk?"

The offer sounded awkward even to her own ears. She would have vastly preferred harrying him across the rooftops to distract him from whatever thoughts plagued him; that kind of thing had always made Billie feel better. But Sam didn't strike her as someone who could ever outrun his own dark thoughts.

"I think everyone is quite sick of hearing me talk," he said, and walked away without sparing Billie a single look. 

She heard the door to his room close--not slam, but there was a finality to the click of the lock.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Sam met Billie outside Sokolov's studio, waiting to walk home with her as he often nowadays. Billie saw him as she exited the building, recognized the slump of his shoulders as he loitered by a lamp post.

It soon became clear that he emerged from the apartment not because his mood had suffered any improvement, but because Billie's words had had some effect on him. He greeted her with a quiet nod, and didn't speak much as they began walking towards the public carriage line. After a few perfunctory questions about his day, which he replied as monosyllabically as he could, Billie dropped any attempt at talking as well.

It was late afternoon, but already getting dark, and the lamp posts around Dabokva lit up, limning the city in pale gold. The snow had been cleared  as best it could, and the sidewalks salted to keep them free of ice, but the workers would have to return after each snowfall, and re-do their work, all winter long. The city hired any strong arm with a shovel, paying them in hot meals and a pittance of pocket change, and there were always people in the world desperate enough to consider that a wage.

Billie and Sam passed through Dabokva's Summer Park on the way to the railcar station, and Sam took no note of their surroundings. There wasn't much to the Summer Park in winter; the cobbled footpaths were clean of snow, for whoever wished to cut through the park, but the benches could only be identified by the large mounds of snow covering them completely. 

There were tracks through the snow, off the path and leading off into the green of the park, then turning into scuffs and gouges in the white blanket, snow tossed around in what Billie suspected had been a snowball fight. The park was quiet now, but it made Billie think back of Dunwall, when the snows were newly fallen, and she and Deirdre took the opportunity to settle any scores they had with other street urchins by means of snowball ambush.

Sam didn't seem to notice as Billie stopped to look off into the snow, and he was at least ten paces away when the snowball hit the back of his head and exploded into a flurry of white across his shoulders.

He froze in place a moment, incredulity in the lines of his body even before he whirled around, wide-eyed. He cast about, looking for the culprit, before his eyes settled on Billie.

Billie kept her face completely blank as Sam stared. She could see the shift of emotions of his face; confusion turning to suspicion, then to doubt, then suspicion again. He didn't just get hit with a snowball by a one-armed woman, that was ridiculous, right? Certainly Billie wasn't that juvenile.

Though he didn't speak out loud, Billie gave a small shrug.

Sam frowned, still confused, and turned back around to continue.

This time, when the second snowball came, he was ready, and he dodged just in time for it to whiz past his ear.

"Backstabber!" he yelled, as he jumped behind one of the snow-buried benches, and grabbed a handful of snow for himself.

Billie let out a bark of laughter, and scooped her third handful of snow, packing it into her fist against her right upper arm. The resulting snowballs weren't particularly geometric, more like clumps than balls, but they served well enough. 

Sam was quicker at making snowballs, and he soon had an entire volley ready to pelt Billie with, but his aim was also worse, so two of them missed and one barely winged Billie's calf. As his ammo ran out, another one of Billie's snowballs smacked against his chest, and he let out an indignant yelp as snow flew up his nose.

He tried keeping obstacles between him and Billie: the benches, a bare trellis, the occasional tree. The snow was knee-high, and they ran through it in stumbling, awkward hops, chasing each other back and forth. Sam managed to get some hits in eventually; Billie shrieked, an unexpectedly shrill sound as snow got down the collar of her coat and inside her shirt, melting into cold trickles of water. Sam laughed, even as he stumbled on his own feet and face-planted into a snowbank. Billie laughed as well, harder than she had in years.

The sky was dark and the park's blanket of snow was a knotwork of tracks and trails by the time their energy flagged, and they dragged themselves back to the pavement. Sam cleared off the snow off one of the benches, and they both sat down heavily, their sharp breaths coming out in white clouds.

"So," Sam asked, "who won?"

Billie's abdomen muscles hurt from too much laughing, but she let out a chuckle as she turned towards Sam, and pointedly brushed off snow off his shoulders.

"Alright, point taken," he said, letting out his own exhausted little laugh.

They sat together in silence until their breaths evened out. 

"Feel better?" Billie asked.

Sam's mouth twisted into a rueful smile. He pushed his shoulder up against Billie's left one, and she reflexively slid her arm across his back in a loose side-hug. He didn't look at her, his gaze instead fixing on some spot on the ground, but he nodded, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. 

Billie squeezed as tight as she could, despite how it made the sweat inside her clothing press against her skin, cold and sticky. They would both definitely need to take hot baths when they got home, and to dry off their coats overnight.

It was worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe we haven't had snow yet where I live? Global warming is pretty fucked up stuff. At least I can always have my snowball fights in fic.


	5. Chapter 5

Billie should have never accepted to go out with drinks with a pack of natural philosophers. Apart from the fact that she suspected they were lightweights, from the moment they stepped into the pub, they began arguing over how they would split the bill, and half a dozen of them were packed into a booth working on an elaborate mathematical equation on the napkins.

If Billie hadn't been feeling the need for a drink by then, the sight of the bickering philosophers certainly induced a sudden thirst.

"Old Dunwall," Billie requested of the bartender, tapping a coin on the counter. She was going to be paying for her own drinks, all things considered. "And make it a double."

The bartender grunted something from the depths of his beard, and placed a glass on the counter, pouring generously. In the background, Sokolov's most brilliant minds were still bickering over mathematics, showing no inclination towards ordering anytime soon.

The first taste of whiskey burned pleasantly all the way down her throat, and Billie didn't take any notice of the stool next to her being occupied until someone leaned very close to her and spoke right next to her ear.

"Hello, stranger," came Yelena Brezha's voice, tinged with amusement. "Or do you prefer Meagan?"

Billie didn't flinch, didn't show any outward reaction of surprise, as she turned her head towards Yelena making herself comfortable at the bar. Too comfortable. Yelena slipped a hand over Billie's shoulders and grinned from ear to ear, like they were old friends. Her veil was pulled back, face boldly exposed, though she was at least discreet enough to have taken off her bonecharm cameo.

"If I find out you followed me here--" Billie began, in a tone she'd learned from Daud.

"Hey now, I had a room rented upstairs long 'fore you swanned in here," Yelena said.

"You also have wanted posters," Billie said, because she'd passed it when she entered the pub. It was smoke-damaged and peeled on the edges, partially covered by posters of more recent interest, but Billie had still spotted Yelena's name, and the advertised reward.

"Precisely why I keep my tab paid up. Ain't that right, Stefan?" she asked of the bartender. The bartender, busy wiping a mug, gave Yelena a long look, and made a non-committal grunt.

"And you found out my name how, exactly?" Billie persisted.

"Did you know there was an article about Sokolov's Studio recently?" Yelena said conversationally. "All the newspapers use silvergraphs instead of etchings now! Very modern! And I must admit, silvergraphs really are better at getting the likeness right." She brought her fingers to Billie's face, running them from the hinge of her jaw down to the tip of Billie's chin. Yelena's hands were calloused, but warm, and the contact sent sparks along Billie's skin.

How long since she'd indulged in this sort of thing, Billie wondered. Since the last time she was Meagan Foster, at the very least. Since she had two arms of her own, her mind supplied, and Billie almost felt self-conscious at this.

"Or, am I wrong?" Yelena asked, as she drew her fingers back.

Billie actually had to think back to pick up the thread of conversation, though she suspected Yelena wasn't--only--referring to silvergraphs. Right. Yes, she remembered when the reporters had come to the studio, how they'd requested a photo of the studio's members. All of Sokolov's apprentices had jockeyed for their place in the silvergraph, but Billie had lingered along the edges, her coat collar pulled up to her nose against the cold, and she'd assumed she'd be out of frame. 

When the article game out, she had still appeared along the very edge of the photo, face only partially obscured, and had felt a twinge of apprehension. The ever-present fear someone would recognize her from a wanted poster, only mildly eased by the ephemeral nature of news papers, a new issue each day distracting attention from the previous day's news. 

"Your wanted posters don't really capture your spirit," Billie offered, after long consideration. They didn't; they were etchings, and they didn't quite capture some quality of Yelena's face, some human glint. The portrait exaggerated how narrow her eyes were, how sharp her features. It gave her a hard expression that Yelena's real face didn't always have.

Yelena seemed delighted by her answer. 

"Say, what are you drinking? Can I get me some?" she asked, peering at Billie's glass.

Before Billie could reply, there was the clearing of a throat just off Billie's shoulder.

Billie turned from Yelena to her other side. She'd almost forgotten about Sokolov's people, but the bickering natural philosophers had apparently agreed on something or other enough to send one of their own--Remus Stoddard--up to Billie at the bar. Five pairs of eyes were watching anxiously from the booth while Stoddard stood next to Billie, trying to look stern.

"Miss Foster, is this miscreant bothering you?" Stoddard asked. He crossed his arms, doing his best to look intimidating.

" _You're_  the one bothering, pip-squeak," Yelena shot back, all her good humor melting away. "Scram."

"Pip-squea--" Stoddard's voice rose an octave, before he cut himself off and cleared his throat deeply. "That was unwarranted."

"You started it, boy-o," Yelena drawled, even though Stoddard was hardly a boy. "You want me to end it?"

That was when Stoddard noticed it; subtly, and so smoothly that even Billie hadn't caught it, Yelena had unholstered her pistol, and angled it straight towards Stoddard. It was hidden from the other patrons by the angle of Billie's body, and from the bartender by the counter, but Stoddard could quite clearly see the muzzle of it aimed for some sensitive parts of his anatomy.

Billie could see the way Stoddard's eyes fixed on the pistol, the man paling and swallowing dryly.

"Miss Foster, is this a friend of yours?" Stoddard asked, his voice faint.

"A friend of a friend," Billie replied lightly. "It's alright, Remus. Go back to the booth while we catch up here."

Stoddard nodded slowly, his eyes still affixed to the pistol, and then took two shuffling steps back before he turned and escaped back to the booth. Billie heard the outburst of alarmed whispers that followed, and sighed. This was not going to improve her reputation at the studio one bit. She had just gotten them to think she was a respectable, harmless civilian, and now they thought Yelena was the kind of person she usually associated with.

"I _was_ just going to have a quiet drink," Billie said pointedly.

"So you bring _that_ gaggle along?" Yelena asked, her grin returning the moment Stoddard disappeared.

Yelena holstered her pistol again, and with the hand not thrown over Billie's shoulders, she picked up Billie's glass and took a swig.

"What do you have to do to get some brandy in this place?" she muttered.

"Ask the bartender," Billie said, drawing her glass of whiskey away from Yelena.

"Mmh," Yelena made an unconvinced sound, and instead of ordering anything, she picked up Billie's coin, and spun it on the countertop.

Billie decided to take a page out of Sam's book.

"What do you want, Yelena?" Billie asked, in the same tone Sam had used in the coach.

Yelena grinned in response, her voice dropping to a purr.

"Why, Miss Foster, and here I thought you'd guessed exactly what I wanted," she said.

Billie regarded Yelena for a beat, before turning back to her drink and draining the glass in one swig. She weighed the issue in the time it took the whiskey to burn its way down her throat. Stefan wordlessly refilled the glass, with no prompting.

"Maybe ask me again after I put the kids to bed," Billie suggested, gesturing vaguely to the natural philosophers still piled up in their booth.

Yelena's grin turned sharper, and she slipped out of her seat.

"How about this? Stefan can tell you where my room is," Yelena said, turning to leave.

Billie glanced over to the bartender, who grunted non-committally.

Yelena was already gone when Billie glanced back after her, a flutter of motion turning a corner, disappearing down a hall. Billie swallowed dryly, and her fingers traced the scratches in the wood of the bar counter. Then she looked down, and realized the coin she'd taken out to pay for her drink had disappeared.

She swallowed a curse, her head turning belatedly towards the hall Yelena had taken, but ultimately she blamed herself. Yelena was a highway robber, more used to getting her money by sticking her pistol into someone's face. For a city miscreant like Billie, more used to lifting keys and coin pouches, it was downright embarrassing that some ham-fisted countryside thug had managed to finesse her like this.

"Hey, Stefan," Billie said, raising her drink to her lips, "put this on her tab."

Stefan's lip twitched up, and he grunted in acknowledgment as Billie drank.

She had no intention of asking where Yelena's room was, or at least not that night. But it suited Billie to have something to ruminate upon. It suited her just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hadn't been planning on Yelena showing up again, but man, she has a talent for popping up.
> 
> Also, I can't believe I didn't mention this yet, but check it out, this fic has achieved [fanart! ](https://nortonlee.tumblr.com/post/165970088392/i-ran-out-of-ink-on-the-first-day-of-inktober)
> 
> (I always plan all kinds of stuff I want to say in the chapter notes, but then when it's time to actually post the chapter I completely forget. Like, I was going to mention 3 chapters ago that the name of Vidma District comes from a Romanian word which means ghost or apparition. Get it? Because it's _life after death_. Haha! I crack myself up.)

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoyed this story? Consider [buying me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/A86637AZ).


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